Blog Post 10/14/15

The current mood surrounding space exploration and travel is one of quiet excitement. With the slew of new technologies and discoveries it is hard for people not to get caught up in the zeitgeist of the stars. After looking through the news produced by Elon Musk, Bill Nye, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Nasa it is clear that many people are looking at space exploration as a close reality rather than a distant goal reached only in SCIFI. One of the greatest examples of this is a Buzzfeed video I found that places a NASA employee on camera and has him discuss the real (and fake) aspects of the new Matt Damon thriller “The Martian”. The fact that a video like this was created by buzzfeed, one of the most popular digital media producers in the world, and that it has garnered over 700,000 views shows that people are slowly becoming more curious about the feasibility of a trip to Mars. That said, I found an article called “New York Times Let’s Not Move to Mars” which shows the complete opposite position. After looking more closely my idea of the ideology is shifting slightly. While I initially thought that the reason we desired space exploration (or didn’t) was based on the grandness of the human ideal in our own minds. Now I see it is a lot more technology focused in that people view space exploration as completely dependent on technology (not technology and desire as I had thought).Overall, the various sources and content streams I have been combing provide a unique look into my topic in that I can no longer build my inferences off my own beliefs; rather, I am looking through the scope of the common collective and building my opinions from the masses.